The Morasthite
by younger-than-that-now
Summary: Ian visits Sara in the police gym, when the witchblade is itching to expand its powers of violent redemption. Ian gets cut. R for theme only -- mind violation and religeous references included -- but there is no touching the only expletive is in the sum


The Morasthite   
By Aonian 

Disclaimor: These are the products of another's imagination, used to suppliment mine. I don't quite know who they belong to at the moment, with the show having been dropped TNT, but they don't belong to me. Ralph Hemecker is God in an almost literal sense. 

Summery: Redemption is a running theme in Witchblade, but so is violence. Scene: Sara is torturing a punching bag in the police gym in the middle of the night, her mind being fiddled with by her bracelet, and Ian creeps in and volunteers for punishment. Characterization to hell -- I tried to be as true as I could be. 

Feedback: I beg of you... 

N.B. Prima: Lines from The Book of Micah, Chapter 5. 

N.B. Secunda: R for theme only -- there is no touching and the only expletive is in the summery. 

N.B. Tertia: Just edited for basic errors. Enjoy. 

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Sara could hear Ian's footsteps through the rain shaking the streaked glass of the window in the police gym. There was the rattle of the fire escape and the scrape of his watch-chain against the metal railing while he climbed to her level, and silence while he settled down to watch her. 

She hit the bag harder, hoped he got the message. 

Not tonight -- there was a feeling of sharp edges in her jaw, like teeth made of razors, and a fraying leash between her body and her mind: She was not in control. The witchblade was restless, sharpening her senses so they tuned in and out like an old radio and there was the agitated bloodlust of a beast waiting to kill. The alien metal was wrapped flat against her wrist, over her white athletic tape, because it had refused to come off. 

And Ian was looking in the window, forehead on the glass. It was dark, and no one else was in the gym. He would come through the window in a moment. 

Boots hit the floor with a thump, masking the sound of glass tinkling apart as it shattered on the floor; the window did not open from the outside. 

"Do you want me to arrest you for property damage?" She asked, trying to keep her bracelet from sharpening itself into a point. 

"Arrest -- to stop, to halt. Do you think that you can arrest me, or what is about to happen?" 

"And what is about to happen?" 

"The world will end -- ah, but that comes later." 

Her senses were keen now, seeing everything in sharp edges. A universe of fine lines and razor points. And beneath the lean body before her, a writhing consciousness, the cold brush of squirming serpents. Dragons, perhaps. 

"Touch me, Sara, take my hand; I can show you... dragons, yes -- " He stopped, blinked. 

"No, I don't think that will be necessary." The touch, she meant. 

Serpents, but she felt an urge to dip her hands in, let the scales of his consciousness slide through her fingers like colored pearls. It was a beautiful mind, so like her own, as the body was, but holding so many secrets that the Witchblade already knew. But the Witchblade wanted him, and she felt like she was holding something soft between her teeth, trying not to bite down. 

"You should go..." but he couldn't, she knew, because her mind was wrapped around his legs and she was breathing into his throat. She slid her mind deeper into his thoughts, his memories, his existence, and found the clammy desperation that masqueraded as desire, and the cold, permanent fear that iced across a stream that could have been honest love, filial devotion. She found a box of tender memories, and a closet of killing, brutal and satisfying. She found, beneath rocks smooth and hard and reluctant to give way, honor and compassion, and true loyalty. And through it all was the chord of purposelessness, the need to fulfill a destiny that didn't exist for him, life without faith. 

And, of course, the twisting, screaming consciousness rebelling against the violation, the invasion, the rape. She knew all his secrets. Her blood, closer than a brother, bounded by fate and genetics, but still, this was a private place. 

_O my people, what have I done unto thee?_

"Nottingham... " He was choking, his brain seizing at the invasion, at the disruption to a delicate synapses, more delicate than most. He was a very complex creature: a man. Sara pulled back, yanked her senses back into the range of mortals, and covered the burning stone on her wrist with her palm, and opened her eyes. 

_O my people._

He collapsed to his knees, coughing and gagging, one hand between his legs on the floor, the other curled around his own throat. She hadn't touched him. 

He looked up, meeting her eyes with open shame, and confronting her with his terror. She had seen what she had no right to see, and faced him with his own insanity. She had no right. 

_Testify against me._

The chimera, beneath the layers of heaving flesh, was curled and afraid; she could feel it balled up and shaking like a dying rabbit, beneath the integument of the tangible, and she realized -- 

We are more alike... 

She could still feel him, even when she couldn't hear the rain through the broken glass anymore. 

"Nott -- Ian, you should get up now. You should go." 

Because he wasn't ready to face himself in her sight, and she had no right to touch him. Another would have to give him comfort: Irons could be expected to give a kind of solice -- a continuation of manipulation, but better than anything she could give because she had no right to touch him. And she could feel the arch-fiend now, and knew that he had sensed something of what happened. Another violation, but this one wasn't her fault. 

"Go. Irons is waiting for you. Your father... " 

He was rising, breath still catching, but there was oxygen in his lungs and in his cells and his face was blank. 

"My father is waiting for me." His voice was perfect, but she could feel his hands shaking through the air. Not too badly, though, and she trusted him to make it over the fire escapes. If she didn't - 

He surprised her; he used the stairs. 

In a moment, she realized that the room was empty and silent and that she could hear hard boots on wet pavement. She sat down on the wooden bench and cried into her hand while the water ran down the broken window and puddled on the floor. 

_O my people... _

  
End. 


End file.
